What's the Purpose? (Final)

One of the issues I enjoyed discussing in the Honors forum class this semester was the question of whether school is preparing kids for the career world. Neil Postman addressed in his chapter on the “False god of Economic Utility.” Economic utility (g of EU) is the idea that if you go to school, you will guarantee yourself a good job. School is the training ground for your job. The belief is that the better jobs are only for those with a degree.

But I am not sure this is the case anymore. What is the likelihood now of someone getting a degree and using that degree in his or her job? Very low. For example, my dad has a degree in business and he is a freelance cartoonist. I suppose by working on his own he is using his degree. But his job does not require him to be a business major. My mom has a degree in Physical Education. She is a stay at home mom who taught us from kindergarten through high school. She may have been able to use some of what she learned in college for our P.E. time, but mostly we would play outside in our own little imaginary worlds. The point is that both my parents did not get a job that requires their degree. Their degree may benefit their lives a bit. But is that little bit worth four or five years of college and tuition fees? I don’t think so.

In our class project I learned a lot about the Nigerian school system. They seem to have figured out how to produce citizens that are trained in an expertise and actually get a job in that expertise. How do they do this? They start the process of determining a career at a young age. By the time Nigerian students reach our level of sophomore or junior year of high school, they have already narrowed down and thoroughly studied the career they want to pursue. The school system does not require them to experience every single subject you can imagine all throughout a student’s education. Instead they experience a variety of subjects in elementary school, and in junior high they can begin the narrowing process. In high school they further shape and focus on their career path. One main difference between the U.S. and Nigeria is Nigeria does not require students to take extra curricular activities. I think this helps the students narrow their topics. They seem to be focusing on what they can learn about their subject verses learning as much as you can about every subject.

Another group’s project was on the No Child Left Behind Act. Their presentation was very informative. It got me wondering about what our school systems focus has become. Are we training students to pass a national test? …a test that can only measure so much information. Or are we training students to become the best that can be? And what does that mean? I don’t think we can achieve this by shuffling kids through a system. They need personal attention, a passion for learning to make our world a better place, and the tools to help them live in this crazy world. So maybe it’s not about getting a good job after all. Maybe it is to find something that you love to do and could do for the rest of your life. I think that is why there are so many undecided students. They do not know what they are good at or what they want to do. We’ve been told that we can do anything we want to do if we just work hard enough to achieve it. When you can do anything, how do you choose? How do you decide you like something over something else? Do go with what your passion is or what will make the most money? It is so hard to decide.

Maybe we need to change our bent. Maybe we need to focus more on what a child can do and what they are good at. Encourage them to pursue what they like to do verse pretty much everything. Give them the tools they need to fine tune their skills. Help open doors of opportunity for them. Maybe we’ll have less frustrated students who don’t know what to do.

I was blessed with parents who wanted to educate me in the important areas, but also help me focus on my passions and talents. They really encouraged me on my education major choice. They helped me find opportunities to explore that field. Now that I want to become a teacher, I want to give students the knowledge they need to discover their own passions and talents like my parents did for me. I want to help them become the best they can be. With a little bit of hard work and encouragement, they might just get there.

Team Project

As a team, we formed our project around comparing the two school systems of Nigeria and United States. For the United States we used a general idea of the school systems since there are a variety of schools there. We mainly looked at the structure of the school, how it was formed, and what curriculum they chose.

For my part I was sort of put into the role of a secretary. By that I mean I was organizing the times to meet, making some decisions on material to use, checking over the PowerPoint. I also helped come up with the general outline of our project and took the notes while we were discussing the project. I also researched some of the information for the United States school systems.

I found the information on the Nigeria schools really fascinating. The way their school system is structured is so different from the United States. They focus more on the individual’s talent and passion rather than wanting to make well rounded students, which seems to be the goal for the United States. I also found it really interesting how the Nigerians value education. They won’t even get married until they finish their education. This makes me really ashamed for taking my education for granted. There are so many opportunities in America. In Nigeria there are a lot of people who want to succeed and get good jobs doing something they love, but there are so few opportunities. It is like the Americans have all the resources but not the drive. And the Nigerians have the drive but not the resources.

It makes for a good discussion to see which school system works. Should America start focusing its education on developing students who are well equipped in certain fields and have the passion to pursue those fields? Or should we continue to educate students on a variety of subjects that do not need to know for their career? Which one holds the most opportunities? It’s a tough thing to think about. In today’s society a person may have several jobs or career in their life time. Therefore it would make sense to give them a broad base of knowledge to be able to do multiple things. But does this make them unstable or unsure? Is this creating students that question purpose in life because they have not found something they excel at? I don’t know. I wonder if it would benefit society to have future workers that do multiple jobs verses people that can only do one type of job.

I think that becoming well rounded has the most benefits, but it also has some downfalls. Such as, a student may take education for granted. A student may not see the value in education when they experience every subject, since they are not honing in on certain skills. College should be the environment to define you skill and talent in certain fields. But it has become a place for you to try different areas of education. It is just a repercussion of high school. When students leave school, unlike students in Nigeria, most of them have no idea what they want to do. That is a downfall.

All in all, learning about Nigeria is what I found to be the most interesting. I had no idea how it worked or how complicated the system is. I think that they are forced by a society with limited opportunities to create their education system the way they do. They cannot produce well rounded citizens because they would not have all the skills necessary for a job. Their society needs workers that are good at what they do. They don’t need a lot of people who jump around from job to job because they want to try everything. Maybe the United States could use some of Nigeria’s stability.